Treatment with systemic chemotherapy is one of the presently used possibilities in cancer treatment. However, substances that are effective in this kind of treatment are often harmful to the system of the body as a whole. Particularly, the treatment of cancer of the liver presents a serious clinical problem, and the success rate when treating liver cancer is today very low.
Although primary liver cancer (hepatoma) is rather uncommon in northern Europe and United States, hepatoma is prevalent in other parts of the world, e.g. in Southeast Asia, Japan, the Pacific Islands, Greece, Italy and parts of Africa. Also, many patients with cancer in the gastrointestinal tract develop isolated hepatic metastases, since the liver is the primary target for dissemination. Due to the distribution of the metastases within the liver, only few patients with liver cancer can be cured by resection.
Liver cancer is today mainly treated with systemic chemotherapy. However, no substantial increase in the time of survival of the patients is following this treatment (L. M. De Brauw "Isolated liver perfusion. An experimental modality in the treatment of hepatic metastases." Thesis, University of Leiden, Leiden, The Netherlands.). A reason for these discouraging results seems to be the fact that the toxicity of the chemodrugs limits the possible dosage due to the systemic effects. Local administration by infusion in the hepatic artery does not solve this problem, since the chemodrugs are distributed in the system also during this procedure.